Close your eyes and count to ten,
I will go and hide but then,
Be sure to find me, I want you to find me,
And we’ll play all over,
We’ll play all over,
We’ll play all over,
Again.
―
Tom Waits, Georgia Lee
We called it the Rock Tree, a stately sugar maple (Acer saccharum) that grew in the open field next to the cemetery in the neighborhood where I grew up.
The name was descriptive. Near the base of the trunk was a large pile of uninteresting rocks, which proved useful to those needing a boost to reach the lowest limb.
In the Fall, its leaves burned brightly across the warm end of the color spectrum as if the tree had developed a sudden urge to be seen.
The roots of the Rock Tree went down into the soil that it shared with the burr oaks towering over the tombstones of Mt. Auburn Cemetery just a few steps away.
If you climbed up into the tree, you could observe the comings and goings of the cemetery without being seen.
It was easy to be invisible at the Rock Tree. Mourners fixed their gaze to the ground while ministers murmured. My siblings and neighbors must have had other things to see because no one ever saw me in the Rock Tree.
I was safe there - day or night, any season. Whenever I wanted to be gone, to disappear, I went to the Rock Tree.
It felt far away but was close enough to my house that I could hear my mom stretch the single syllable of my name as she called me home for supper.
_
I returned to my hometown recently and drove through the neighborhood, stopping by the field, making pilgrimage to the tree that sheltered me from the brooding storms of a childhood torn by trauma.
Like the houses, streets, and granite gravestones, the Rock Tree was smaller than I remembered. There was not a single rock to be found, but I did pick up a branch. And, after asking permission, I brought it home to my studio to see what might be found hiding inside.
Counting the growth rings in groups of ten, this branch now perched on my bench emerged from the trunk of the Rock Tree about the time my childhood was coming to an end. Four decades is a short spam of time for a tree that can live over 400 years, but this branch looked older than its age and bore obvious signs of decay. Micro-organisms had hollowed out the heartwood and spalted the sapwood. In a few short years, the branch would have decomposed completely, disappeared, quietly becoming one with the soil that brought it to life. Instead, the cycle was suspended, paused, at least for the time being.
Sharp blade meets hard wood. I went in looking for birds and they were easy to find: common ground doves (Columbina passerina), common canary (Serinus canaria), and an uncommon cerulean warbler (Setophaga cerulea). Rather than imposing my will over the wood, the creative process for me is more akin to discovery. I read the grain, following its flow like you follow a conversation. The rhythms of grace and growth are written in rings, swirls, and straight lines - all of it swimming beneath the bark.
So far, I found a flock of seven birds and one over-sized egg. The birds will begin a meandering migration soon, heading off in new directions that they know only by heart. The route will take them back to where they began, a close proximity to death, to be with those who find themselves at the edge of life. They will roost on shelves overlooking hospice beds, nestle into a weary palm as a wordless prayer, and hide in plain sight over a process that is fleeting and eternal. And when the time comes, when death is found, these birds will go to a different shelf, into other hands beside other beds, hiding all over again.
These RockTree birds are vulnerable as they have no finish applied, no polyurethane protection - they are simply sanded, made smooth by a fifteen-step process with sandpaper whose grit is measured in microns. Sugar maple wood is dense -hard as rock, so while these birds are filled with holes, hollowed out by death, they feel sturdy, surprisingly whole. Death will do that, surprise you with beauty and wholeness even as it hollows you out, leaving a void, a cavity that can’t be filled, a chasm that will never close.
__
My octogenarian mother, whose cognitive decline has altered the pattern and depth of our conversations, has been hollowed out many times by a close proximity to death: her parents, a pregnancy, two husbands, countless parishioners and friends along the way.
When I asked her if she remembered the Rock Tree, she closed her eyes and said slowly, “It’s where I could always find you.”
TLH
2024
